Reuters: Sunday May 31 10:12 AM EDT

Colombia goes to polls to elect president

By Karl Penhaul

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombians went to the polls Sunday to 
choose a successor to President Ernesto Samper, whose rocky four-year rule 
has been plagued by drug corruption Scandals and soaring violence.

A rebel bomb killed at least two people shortly before voting got under way
in Colombia's troubled northeast, but no other major incidents of
election-related violence were reported.

Recent opinion polls forecast Conservative Party-backed Andres Pastrana
will defeat Samper's hand-picked successor Horacio Serpa and end the
Liberal Party's 12-year grip on power.

But a last-minute surge by independent candidate Noemi Sanin, battling the
notorious corruption of the traditional Liberal and Conservative party
machineries and ingrained Latin American "macho" attitudes, could cause an
election upset.

If successful, and a poll broadcast late Saturday on the NTC television
news program showed her in a statistical tie with Serpa for second place,
Sanin would become Colombia's first woman president.

None of the three leading candidates seems likely to get more than 50
percent of the vote, however, thereby triggering a second-round runoff
between the top two contenders on June 21.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. local time (1300 GMT) and were due to close at 4
p.m. (2100 GMT).  Electoral officials have said 95 percent of the official
vote should be announced before nightfall.

Election campaigning has exposed variations of style and personality but
few substantial policy differences.  A central plank of the candidates'
platforms is the need to halt Colombia's three-decade-old civil conflict
which has left more than 35,000 dead and forced almost one million people
to flee their homes in the last 10 years alone.

Rebel rifles have been largely silent in recent weeks and the most savage
violence -- a spate of massacres in which more than 50 civilians were
killed -- were carried out by right-wing death squads, which international
human rights groups say are covertly backed by the armed forces.

Unlike the attacks and kidnappings that marred recent municipal and
legislative elections, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
Latin America's oldest and largest rebel force, has said it will not
sabotage by violence what it branded the "villainous and deceitful"
presidential vote.

But a bomb, planted by suspected National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels,
killed two people in the violence-torn northeast oil refining city of
Barrancabermeja minutes before polls opened there, police said.  The
Cuban-inspired ELN, founded by radical Roman Catholic priests in 1964, is
Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group.

Despite the receding threat of widescale guerrilla violence, the military
has been on a state of red alert across Colombia since Wednesday and all
alcohol sales were banned from Friday in a bid to cut down on common 
crime.

Deeply unpopular President Samper, who is constitutionally barred from
seeking re-election, will officially step down on Aug. 7. He came to power
amid allegations that he bankrolled his campaign with $6 million in 
donations from the billionaire Cali drug cartel and spent most of his 
administration fighting off critics at home and in Washington.  His track 
record of economic management also came under fire as unemployment 
soared and a burgeoning fiscal deficit threatened to undermine Colombia's 
investment grade rating, which has until now ensured relatively cheap 
foreign loans. "Four years in government in Colombia is like 40 years in any 
other country," Samper told Reuters in an interview Thursday.

The embattled president kicked off the voting early Sunday by casting his
ballot as polls opened in Bogota's historic Plaza de Boliwhite dove in a
symbolic gesture for peace. He urged all of the country's 20.9 million
voters to support Colombia's democracy with a massive turnout, saying "the
great winner this afternoon has to be the vote for optimism which will
allow us to open the doors to the 21st Century."  Asked by reporters what he 
considered to be the main challenge facing whoever succeeds him, Samper 
said "the country has problems but we will move forward."